In recent years, Archbishop Andrew, founder of New-Diveevo
Convent in Spring Valley, New York, where the memory of St.
Seraphim is sacredly kept, has deservedly been given much
honor, especially in 1971 on the 50th anniversary of his ordination
as priest, and in 1973 on his 80th birthday, when he was elevated
to the rank of Archbishop. Many come to him just to receive
his blessing, knowing of him as a kind of last Russian
Orthodox Elder, and hoping to obtain through him some
contact with the genuine tradition of Orthodox spirituality
which is fast dying out today. And to be sure, he is a living
link with the Holy Fathers in a literal sense, for he was
a disciple of the last two Optina Elders, Anatole and Nectarius,
and it was under his epitrachelion that the last Elder, Nectarius,
died in 1928. But it is not for this that he is most important
to us today; it is rather for his teaching, received from
these holy Elders, on how to survive as an Orthodox Christian
in the anti-Christian 20th century.

This teaching, while solidly Patristic, is not a teaching
from books, but from life. The four excerpts from his writings
that are presented below tell the main events of his life,
which is one of great trials and sufferings, taking place
in conditions of revolution, anarchy, arrests, catacomb services,
exile, bombings, evacuations. But in these sufferings alone--
as helpful as they are to spiritual life--is not to be found
the key to his teaching; others have suffered similar trials
fruitlessly. In every place where historical circumstances
have driven him--Kiev, Berlin, Wendlingen, New York State--a
close-knit Orthodox community has formed around him; and this
is closer to a key to understanding his teaching. Such communities,
rare today among Orthodox Christians, do not arise spontaneously,
but only in especially favorable circumstances, if there is
present a conscious Orthodox philosophy of life. This conscious
Patristic philosophy is what, most of all we can learn from
Archbishop Andrew. Let us try to set down here the main points,
of this philosophy which, of course, is not a systematic
philosophy based on abstractions, but a living philosophy
derived from Orthodox spiritual experience.

First, Orthodoxy is not merely a ritual, or belief, or pattern
of behavior, or anything else that a man may possess, thinking
that he is thereby a Christian, and still be spiritually dead;
it is rather an ELEMENTAL REALITY OR POWER (ÒÚË¶Ëþ
in Russian) which transforms a man and gives him the strength
to live in the most difficult and tormenting conditions, and
prepares him to depart with peace into eternal life.

Second, the essence of the true Orthodox life is GODLINESS
or piety (·ÎÓòÂÒÚËÂ),
which is, in the definition of Elder Nectarius, based on the
etymology of the word, holding what is Gods in
honor. This is deeper than mere right doctrine; it is
the entrance of God into every aspect of life, life lived
in trembling and fear of God.

Third, such an attitude produces the Orthodox WAY OF LIFE
(·šÚ) which is not merely the outward customs
or behavior that characterize Orthodox Christians, but the
whole of the conscious spiritual struggle of the man for whom
the Church and its laws are the center of everything he does
and thinks. The shared, conscious experience of this way of
life, centered on the daily Divine services, produces the
genuine Orthodox community, with its feeling of lightness,
joy, and inward quietness. Non-Orthodox people, and even many
not fully conscious Orthodox Christians, are scarcely able
to imagine what this experience of community might be, and
would be inclined to dismiss it as something subjective;
but no one who has wholeheartedly participated in the life
of a true Orthodox community, monastic or lay, will ever doubt
the reality of this Orthodox feeling. When Archbishop Andrew
tells of his lifelong-- and successful-- search to find and
even create the lost quietness of his Orthodox
childhood, he expresses the desire of everyone who has drunk
deeply of Holy Orthodoxy to find the place, create the conditions,
and acquire the state of soul wherein to live the full and
authentic Orthodox life, one in mind and soul with other similar
strugglers. Even if this ideal is seldom attained in practice,
it still remains the Orthodox ideal.

Fourth, without a constant and conscious spiritual struggle
even the best Orthodox life or community can become a hothouse,
an artificial Orthodox atmosphere in which the outward manifestations
of Orthodox life are merely enjoyed or taken for
granted while the soul remains unchanged, being relaxed and
comfortable instead of tense in the struggle for salvation.
How often a community, when it becomes prosperous and renowned,
loses the precious fervor and oneness of soul of its early
days of hard struggles! There is no "formula for
the truly God-pleasing Orthodox life; anything outward can
become a counterfeit; everything depends on the state of the
soul, which must be trembling before God, having the law of
God before it in every area of life, every moment keeping
what is Gods in honor, in the first place in life.

Fifth, the greatest danger to the Orthodox way of life in
modern times is what Archbishop Andrew calls humanism--a
general term encompassing the whole vast intellectual (and
now also political) movement which has as its ultimate aim
to destroy true Christianity and replace it with a this-wor1dly,
rationalistic philosophy in which man, in effect, becomes
a god unto himself. The manifestations of humanism are many,
from the Renaissance in the West and the heresy of the Judaizers
in Russia in the 15th century and before, through the brazen
atheism and Revolution of the 18th century, to Communism and
every other philosophy in our own day which places the ultimate
value in this world and leads men away from God. Humanism
takes possession of men in various ways, not usually by a
conscious intellectual conversion to it, but more often by
laxness and unawareness in spiritual life. The Orthodox answer
to this danger--whose ultimate end is the reign of Antichrist--is
a CONSCIOUS ORTHODOX PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.

This teaching is profound, and few perhaps are they who are
capable of following it to its end. Archbishop Andrew, much
ailing in body, is in the sunset of his age; this living link
with a time and a tradition much richer than our own will
not long be with us. Put his teaching must not die with him.
By Gods Providence, the celebrated writer Solzhenitsyn
came this year to New Diveevo, and Archbishop Andrew took
advantage of this opportunity to communicate this teaching,
even if in the briefest form, to him, a typical example of
the awakening-- but still unforme-- religious consciousness
in Russia today. But this teaching is not only for Russians,
who either have known Orthodoxy thoroughly incarnated in life,
or else (like Solzhenitsyn) are drawn by their blood with
longing for something their ancestors had; it is the teaching
of life for all conscious Orthodox Christians.

Let those who deeply love and treasure Orthodoxy now take
this teaching and--even as Archbishop Andrew did with the
teaching of his beloved St. Tikhon-- live by it, and thereby
regain and restore even in our barbarous and anti-Christian
times, the ORTHODOX WAY OF LIFE.